Sam Altman's AI Usage Prediction Is Wild — But These 3 Stocks Could Cash In - AOL

Rich Duprey Sun, September 6, 2026 at 1:21 PM UTC Shutterstock Quick Read Sam Altman says the world's heaviest AI user surged from 100,000 tokens monthly in 2020 to hundreds of billions by mid-2026. Nvidia posted 106% revenue growth to $96 billion, with Data Center revenue jumping 117%, making it the clearest AI compute beneficiary. The durable AI opportunity sits in infrastructure, as evidenced by Vertiv's revenue rising 30% and GE Vernova's data-center orders doubling its entire 2025 total. Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now, and NVIDIA made the cut. Enter your email to see the other nine names and why NVDA earned its spot. The report is free. Enter your email and see the full list. Artificial intelligence is moving from an interesting software feature into something closer to a new industrial utility. The numbers behind that transition are getting difficult to ignore. Morgan Stanley estimates global AI token usage rose from 6.4 trillion tokens in January to 22.7 trillion by mid-2026, a roughly 250% increase in just months. Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently described an even more dramatic shift at the G20 Innovation Summit: The world's heaviest AI user went from consuming roughly 100,000 tokens a month in early 2020 to hundreds of billions by mid-2026. That's a million-fold increase -- or more -- in about 6.5 years. AI's Token Explosion Has a Physical Cost Tokens are simply the units AI models process to generate responses, but their growth represents something much bigger: AI is being used continuously for coding, research, automation, and increasingly autonomous tasks. Altman's extrapolation is even more significant. He suggested that if usage follows a similar trajectory for another 6.5 years, average per-capita consumption could reach 100 billion tokens a month. He acknowledged that's a simplistic projection, but the underlying message is important: AI demand cannot scale indefinitely without dramatically more computing infrastructure. Free Report, Just Released Why NVDA Made Our Top 10 List 24/7 Wall St has helped investors make money for over two decades, and our top analysts just finished ranking the definitive Top 10 Stocks To Buy Now . Not the ten biggest companies. Not the ten everyone is arguing about. The ten best stocks to buy right now. And NVDA made the cut. See who else did. The report is free, and you can see why we think each stock is a top investment today. Enter Your Email and See the Ten → That makes Nvidia ( NASDAQ:NVDA ) the clearest beneficiary. Its fiscal second-quarter revenue reached $96.2 billion, up 106% year-over-year, while Data Center revenue jumped 117% to $89 billion. Nvidia expects another $108 billion of revenue in its fiscal third quarter. 24/7 Wall St. Advertisement Software is scaling a million-fold, but the physical world is hitting a wall. These three industries now hold the keys to the AI revolution. © 24/7 Wall St. Power and Cooling Are the Next Bottlenecks More AI workloads mean more servers, but those servers need electricity and increasingly sophisticated cooling systems. That's where Vertiv ( NYSE:VRT ) stands out. Its first-quarter 2026 revenue rose 30% to $2.65 billion, while adjusted free cash flow jumped 147% to $653 million. The company raised its full-year revenue forecast to $13.5 billion to $14 billion, representing 29% to 31% organic growth. Then there is the power itself. GE Vernova ( NYSE:GEV ) reported second-quarter revenue of $11.1 billion, up 22%, while its backlog reached $176 billion. Even more telling, data-center orders in its Electrification business exceeded $5 billion through June -- more than double the company's entire 2025 total. 'Tokenmaxxing' Creates a Speed Bump Altman's trajectory shouldn't be treated as a guaranteed straight line upward. Morgan Stanley recently highlighted "tokenmaxxing" as a concern, with companies attempting to limit wasteful AI consumption after costs increased. Uber Technologies ( NYSE:UBER ), Meta Platforms ( NASDAQ:META ) and Amazon ( NASDAQ:AMZN ) have all been cited in the broader debate over AI spending discipline. But Morgan Stanley's numbers suggest the bigger picture remains intact. Median enterprise token spending is less than $11 per employee per month, while the average AI use case can generate roughly $55 of value against an estimated $2 to $5 token cost. That's a potentially greater-than-10-times return. In short, efficiency could actually increase demand. Cheaper AI makes more applications economical -- a version of the Jevons paradox Morgan Stanley explicitly highlights. Key Takeaway Investors shouldn't assume a million-fold increase in tokens means a million-fold increase in revenue for AI model providers. Pricing will fall, companies will impose budgets, and more efficient models will require fewer tokens. The more durable opportunity may sit underneath the software. Nvidia supplies the compute, Vertiv keeps the machines running, and GE Vernova helps provide the electricity. If AI becomes as ubiquitous as Altman envisions, those physical bottlenecks could remain valuable long after today's token economics have changed. Got $1,000? NVDA Made Our Top 10 List. Here's Who Else Did If you have cash sitting in your account right now, give this two minutes. After more than two decades of helping investors beat the market, our top analysts at 24/7 Wall St. put together a definitive report on the Top 10 Stocks To Buy Today. And NVDA was one of them. They combed the entire market. It's not 10 ideas, not 10 stocks everyone is talking about, it's what their research points to as the 10 best stocks to buy right now, and it's free. Read more here and see which stocks made the list -->> Contact editorial@247wallst.com for any questions or corrections.